[throwawayyy1986]

It was obvious when Cuomo was doing a victory lap book tour during the summer declaring that masks work and he figured out how to fix things, only for infections to pick up again when the season changed.

I expect it'll be obvious in retrospect that human interventions had much less effect than thought, and the largest factors were a mix of demographics like obesity and nutrition, as well as geography (which influences sun exposure, humidity, etc.).